It is well known in traditional computer and digital communication networks for technicians to respond to the generation of error logs by notifying affected users of system problems, analyzing and then fixing the problems using an assortment of software commands and/or tools. The use of such software commands is often repetitive and requires the technician to manually enter the commands upon each observation of a specific log. Thousands of logs can be generated by a single problem. For example, if a T1 line goes down, error logs could be generated by thousands of phones that cannot find a dial tone.
Therefore, according to the prior art, automatic filtering of error logs has been effected through the use of “rule sets” to determine if a combination of logs satisfies a given criteria. One example of such an automated process is a product from Plexis (http://www.triadhc.com/edi.shtml) called Plexis EDI Toolkit. If the criteria is satisfied, it is known in the art either to generate a further log or to provide an overall summary for describing the problem to the technician. Thus, it is known to generate Higher Level Logs (HLL) from Lower Level Logs (LLL) in response to predetermined rule sets being satisfied. The Lower Level Logs (LLL) are generated by network applications or devices. Such systems are valuable because the HLLs help to explain to the system administrator/designer what is really going on in the system.
There are instances where HLL's generate more HLL logs, or combinations of LLL's and HLL's generate new HLL's. According to the prior art, these rule sets are either manually applied by the technician as required, which can be a time consuming and complicated task where many logs have been generated, or the rule sets remain activated at all times, in which case analysis of the logs becomes time consuming since many rule sets need to be examined.